Shapeable Cable Conduit With Stiffeners for Slip-Resistant Routing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional cable management systems lack flexibility and user customization, making it difficult to organize and maintain cables in desired configurations, especially in limited spaces, and often fail to prevent slippage of conduits along cables.
Innovation Solution
A shapeable conduit with a circumferentially flexible wall and manually deformable axial stiffening members, equipped with a releasable coupling mechanism, allowing for user-defined configurations and modular expansion, and featuring customizable jackets to prevent slippage and organize cables effectively.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If conventional rigid conduits are used for cable management, then cable protection is provided, but flexibility and user customization are lost
Solution Approach 1:
The conduit employs a flexible wall structure that can be manually deformed into various shapes while maintaining its integrity. This flexible shell allows the conduit to adapt to different cable configurations and spatial arrangements, resolving the contradiction between adaptability and structural strength by using material properties that combine flexibility with sufficient mechanical strength.
Solution Approach 2:
The conduit transitions from a static rigid structure to a dynamic flexible structure that can be manipulated and reconfigured by the user. The flexible wall allows the conduit to change its shape and configuration dynamically, enabling user customization while maintaining adequate strength through the inherent properties of the flexible material and its structural design.
2Adaptability or versatility
If conventional fixed-length conduits are used, then manufacturing simplicity is maintained, but cable length management flexibility is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The conduit is divided into multiple modular sections that can be connected end-to-end to achieve different total lengths. This segmentation allows users to customize the conduit length by adding or removing sections, providing cable length management flexibility while keeping each individual module relatively simple in structure.
Solution Approach 2:
Excess conduit sections can be nested within each other or stored within the conduit structure itself when not in use. This nesting capability allows the conduit system to provide variable effective lengths while maintaining a compact form factor, balancing length adaptability with structural simplicity.
3Ease of operation
If smooth-walled conduits are used, then cable insertion is facilitated, but slippage prevention is compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The conduit incorporates localized gripping features or textured surfaces at specific positions along its length, while other portions remain smooth to facilitate cable insertion. This local quality variation allows the conduit to provide both easy cable insertion in smooth regions and reliable slippage prevention in regions with gripping features, resolving the contradiction between ease of operation and reliability.
Data Source
AI summary
Apparatus and associated methods relate to a shapeable conduit. In an illustrative example, the shapeable conduit may have a circumferentially flexible wall extending along a longitudinal axis. The wall may, for example, define a lumen configured to receive one or more cables. Multiple longitudinally extendable manually deformable axial stiffening members may, for example, be circumferentially distributed in the wall. A releasable coupling mechanism may, for example, have at least two mating engagement members. The engagement members may, for example, releasably engage in an enclosed state such that the wall circumscribes the lumen. The engagement members may, for example, be tangentially separable into an open state such that the cables can be radially transferred between an interior and an exterior of the lumen. Various embodiments may advantageously be manipulated such that the axial stiffening members cause the flexible wall to retain cables enclosed within the lumen in a desired configuration.